David Storey kicked off the meeting with news about changes to the club’s website. The new domain is IBMRing6.com. He also discussed upcoming events such as next month’s auction and the Adam Elbaum lecture scheduled for May.
This was the night of our annual Close-up Contest. Calvin Tan started with a beautifully choreographed routine of cards and coins – the motion and magic synchronized to music. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill matrix. He started out with card productions and moved on to the magical movement of coins under cards and ended with a veritable flurry of multiplying coins.
Steve Friedberg’s “Be Natural” routine made a series of card transformations in ways that followed Howie Schwarzman’s maxim: what would it look like if it were real magic? Giving the entire audience the perfectly fair views of all his moves, his magic was all the more amazing.
Ryan Adamowicz presented his “Sleights of the Mind” completely restoring a torn card not only in full view of the audience but employing all five senses in the process. Reba Strong presented an old family recipe. The amazing thing was that the only ingredient was the paper on which the recipe was written, producing from its flames an amazing confection. Bill McElvenney presented Presidents’ Day effects. “Escape from New York” was the Matrix whose patter recounted George Washington’s historic feat that saved the Continental Army from destruction. He ended with “The Cleveland Sandwich,” a whimsical presentation of an Ambitious Card and Grover Cleveland’s two non-consecutive terms.
The contest winners were: first Calvin Tan, second Bill McElvenney, and third Steve Friedberg.
Bill McElvenney